Never Give Up
On trying new things, new doctors or therapists, regardless of how many professionals have told you that you cannot be helped. And be wary of the doctor who tells you it’s all in your head.
This is my own story of how my never giving up led me to living pain free! And how without my knowing it in advance life was leading me right where I needed to be.
As a child I was very athletic and studied gymnastics for flexibility, speed and coordination. I fell, had 12 compression fractures, ended my athletic career and began my life with chronic pain.
By trade, I was a tenth generation butcher until an accident left me with a 55% disability. Rehabilitation, along with an inherent mechanical ability, led me to be retrained as an auto mechanic.
As a very successful auto mechanic I worked in a high stress environment that brought me an ulcer and so I began to look for something else. I knew I liked caring about my customers more than their cars, and had been gaining an awareness of how certain tendencies and patterns caused cars to be in need of repair.
As an auto mechanic, perfection was required. 80% improvement was not acceptable – not even 98%. In fact most people expected 110% improvement from my work.
However, I was discovering that in the world of pain, any improvement was considered good. And in chronic pain, there was to be no expectation of improvement at all. People just had to learn to live with it. Me included.
I refused to accept that I had to learn to live with pain for the rest of my life. And I knew that the cause of my problem was not in my head. I saw many different specialists who all approached my problems from their point of view without any long lasting result. Eventually I found a practitioner at an Oriental health spa who left me pain free for one whole month. When I went back to the spa, the building had burned down and I couldn’t find that practitioner again. Still, his work strengthened my belief that improvement was possible and I pressed on.
I had been introduced to bodywork as a child living with my Ukrainian grandfather who used his knowledge of the body to rehab horses and people. My grandfather understood that proper muscle balance was required for healthy and pain free posture. His understanding added to what I learned about the musculo-skeletal system as a butcher, further advanced by what I learned about tendencies and patterns leading to breakdown as a mechanic – as well as giving 110 % improvement – fueled my hunger to learn whatever it took to really make a difference.
And so I switched from being an auto mechanic to a people mechanic.
My studies eventually led to an integrated approach I call Neurofascial Re-education (NFR). NFR includes acupressure points, neuromuscular trigger points, myofascial release, unwinding, cranio-sacral techniques, and neuro-emotional kinesiology (addressing the mental-emotional components sometimes related to physical distress).
I was able to help many people but could not alleviate my own pain and numbness. Finally a doctor (on Kauai) ordered an MRI and diagnosed Cervical Spinal Stenosis – a condition (correctable by surgery) in which bones impinge on nerves. Finally a reason for the pain, numbness and burning in my extremities and a solution!
Gary Remes, LMT, He also makes outcalls. His approach helps people with Parkinson’s, aging associated muscle contraction, MS, TMJ, frozen shoulder, carpal tunnel, numbness in hands and feet, tension and migraine headaches, chronic pain and much more. His work reminds the body of what works and feels good – what it already knows but has forgotten.
